This hands-on guide takes students from start-to-finish through the research process while showcasing the complexities and interrelationships of different methods, schools of thought, and associated analytical strategies. Encouraging students to think of qualitative research as a flexible, cyclical process rather than a linear one, this book offers a panoramic strategy and dynamic approach to qualitative research that accommodates the fluid nature of research and accounts for lessons learned through lived experience. With an emphasis on the analysis stage-within case, across case, and the dialogue between these insights and existing literature-it uses concrete applications to show how your methodological decisions translate into practice. It covers: Forming, defending, and evaluating research questions Choosing a research approach Ensuring ethically sound research Collecting quality data Analyzing data in layers Reporting research results Through a conversational tone that unpacks key vocabulary and acts as a companion supervisor, this book equips you to traverse every step of the qualitative research journey.
Chapter 1: Choosing qualitative inquiry The knowledge production process Qualitative research design Realm of qualitative epistemologies Chapter 2: Designing an iterative research project Designing the research The writing of a research project Chapter 3: Choosing an Approach to Guide Methodological Decisions Phenomenology Grounded theory Discourse analysis Narrative analysis Ethnography Chapter 4: Choosing Tools for Your Fieldwork Observation Interviews Documents Chapter 5: Ethical challenges in qualitative research Procedural Ethics Making an Application to the REB Concerns at the Heart of Research Relationships Chapter 6: Preparing for analysis and validity requirements The palimpsest as a metaphor for principles of analysis Vertical analysis: The first stratum of the palimpsest Horizontal analysis: The second stratum of the palimpsest Theoretical analysis: The third stratum of the palimpsest Initial project Chapter 7: Vertical Analysis Contextualizing condensation Semantic condensation Chapter 8: Horizontal analysis Horizontal analysis using discourse analysis through interpretative repertoires Horizontal analysis using a mixed approached inspired by grounded theory and narrative analysis Chapter 9: Theorizing and presenting the results Classification by Typology Bringing out contrasting characters Establishing a dialogue to enrich concepts Ensuring the quality of the study
This book is a must for new researchers who want to succeed in qualitative inquiry. -- Pranee Liamputtong The real coup de maitre is the way the authors compare qualitative research to a palimpsest and subsequently sketch the phases of data analysis with suitable examples. Qualitative researchers...have a read! -- Lakshmi Balachandran Nair This book goes significantly beyond "how to do research" and a recipe approach found in many textbooks. Rather it encourages engagement with "being" a researcher and uses project checklists to prompt reflexivity. -- Jo Ferrie In this book Gaudet and Robert do a number of revealing things. First, they take the powerful metaphor of journey to help illuminate the process of inquiry. Second, they take key markers of quality and provide pointers to these 'topographical features' that help provide surety on the way. Following on, the authors make accessible key concepts and ideas and illustrate how they animate and reveal key decision-making points. Each of these key features build richer understandings and induct researchers new to qualitative inquiry in order to make a difference. -- Peter Wright The most valuable sections are the three chapters on analysis of qualitative data, which go through two texts step by- step to give students a hands-on feel for a three-layer analysis that the authors imagine as a palimpsest - because 'a new creation can arise from original materials that had been repeatedly deconstructed and reconstructed'. The texts chosen are engaging, and the close analysis is interesting -- Hannah Grene * SRA Research Matters *
